I had a headache so I asked my youngest (8-year old) son for 'a gentle, healing hug'. He came over and started to hug me but then drew back saying 'Hang on, I'm wet. It won't work.'

I have never talked to my children about magic, never included them in any magic I had done. So I was sure my son had not come across the idea of water 'grounding' magic from me. I was familiar with the idea that water has the same effect on the flow of magical energy as it does on electricity. It is like a bottomless hole that you can pour any amount of energy into and it will never get any fuller. It is a path of least resistance and if it is present the energy will go there rather than where you wanted it to go. It is useful when you want to dump a buildup of energy, such as the aura cleaning magic I do using water. But normally you would no more do magic with wet hands than you would plug in your hairdryer with wet hands.

So how did my 8-year old know this? I asked him why being wet would stop his healing cuddle from working and he said that it got in the way of the healing, and sort of spread it around so it couldn't work properly. He went and dried himself and then gave me a cuddle. I still have a headache but I think this is a new one caused by thinking too hard about how my baby son got to be so wise.